Exoplanets Revealed

A lot of people are already blogging this but here we have it: an optical image of a planet orbiting around another star. The star is Fomalhaut and the planet is excitingly named Fomalhaut b. Name suggestions anyone? It orbits roughly 115 AU from the star and is approximately 3 Jupiter masses in size. The inset image shows the different captures of the planet by Hubble, taken two years apart.

Of course, since this object has not cleared its orbit, I suppose it must actually be an exodwarfplanet.

I'm Robert Simpson and I work at Google in London. I am the creator of <a href="http://dotastronomy.com">.Astronomy</a>. I am astrophysicist formerly of the <a href="http://zooniverse.org">Zooniverse</a> at the University of Oxford.